Tidbits on December 27, 2018
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

Set 5 of My All Time Favorite Photographs
http://cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Favorites/Set05/FavoritesSet05.htm  

 

Tidbits on December 27, 2018
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Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

For earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 
Bookmarks for the World's Library --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm 

Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Updates from WebMD --- Click Here

Google Scholar --- https://scholar.google.com/

Wikipedia --- https://www.wikipedia.org/

Bob Jensen's search helpers --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm

Bob Jensen's World Library --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl

Mathematical Association of America: On This Day --- www.maa.org/news/on-this-day




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio

The Christmas Truce of 1914: A Heartening Story of Humanity in the Middle of War ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2010/12/25/the-christmas-truce/?mc_cid=a6bc841ed1&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Pristine Footage Lets You Revisit Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Brothers ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/pristine-footage-lets-you-revisit-life-in-paris-in-the-1890s.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Inn on Sunset Hill (just down from our cottage) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5cqUX0LcbU&t=9s


Free music downloads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm 

O Holy Night – from Josh Groban to Cartman ---
https://www.jborden.com/music-monday-o-holy-night-from-josh-groban-to-cartman/

David Byrne Curates a Playlist of Great Protest Songs Written Over the Past 60 Years: Stream Them Online ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/david-byrne-curates-a-playlist-of-great-protest-songs-written-over-the-past-60-years.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Jensen Comment
I don't know of a single song protesting how labor union featherbedding brought down railroad passenger service nationwide (other than urban rail commuting).

Music Monday: An Amazing Rendition of Hallelujah ---
https://www.jborden.com/music-monday-an-amazing-rendition-of-hallelujah/
Morman Tabernacle Choir Rendition ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rf3WK_IJ1g

The Moonlight Sonata But the Bass Is a Bar Late, and the Melody Is a Bar Early ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/the-moonlight-sonata-but-the-bass-is-a-bar-late-and-the-melody-is-a-bar-early.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Musical Instrument Museums Online --- www.mimo-international.com/MIMO

Web outfits like Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2

Pandora (my favorite online music station) --- www.pandora.com
TheRadio
(online music site) --- http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) --- http://www.slacker.com/

Gerald Trites likes this international radio site --- http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:  Search for a song or band and play the selection --- http://songza.com/
Also try Jango --- http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) --- http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live --- http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note
U.S. Army Band recordings --- http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp

Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free music selections online ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm


Photographs and Art

Art Matters --- https://artuk.org/about/art-matters

Great Ice Skating:  The Martian North Pole Is a 'Winter Wonderland' ---
Click Here

Apolo 8" Earth Rise ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/science/earthrise-moon-apollo-nasa.html

Saturn is losing its rings. I hope I can wait it out ---
Click Here

The Atlantic:  2018 Photos ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/12/most-2018-photos-ever/578458/

Take a Virtual Tour of Brazil’s National Museum & Its Artifacts: Google Digitized the Museum’s Collection Before the Fateful Fire ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/take-a-virtual-tour-of-brazils-national-museum-its-artifacts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Most Expensive Homes Sold in the Hamptons in 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-expensive-homes-sold-in-hamptons-new-york-2018-12

Stunning Science and Nature Photographs of 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/best-photos-science-nature-disasters-environment-wildlife-2018-12

The 54 Best Sports Photographs of 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/best-sports-photos-of-2018-2018-12

40 photos of Google's rise from a Stanford dorm room to becoming a global internet superpower ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-history-in-photos-2015-10

From the Scout Report on December 14, 2018

New Museum of Black Civilizations Opens in Senegal

 

Senegal Unveils a Vast Museum That Raises the Stakes in Africa's Campaign to Reclaim Its Art
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/museum-of-black-civilizations-1409911

Museum of Black Civilisations aims to 'decolonise knowledge'
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/museum-black-civilisations-aims-decolonise-knowledge-181204221519936.html

President of France Will Recommend Full Restitution of Looted African Works
https://hyperallergic.com/472215/president-of-france-will-recommend-full-restitution-of-looted-african-works

Musee du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac: Africa
http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/collections/all-collections/the-main-collections-level/africa

What should be done with stolen artworks?
http://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39974/1/what-should-be-done-with-stolen-artworks-ethiopia-nigeria-v-and-a-museum-debate

Hey, that's our stuff: Maasai tribespeople tackle Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/dec/04/pitt-rivers-museum-oxford-maasai-colonial-artefacts

 

Bob Jensen's threads on art history ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#ArtHistory

Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History


Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on libraries --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries

The Case of Agatha Christie ---
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n24/john-lanchester/the-case-of-agatha-christie
Jensen Comment
I liked her books because they held my attention in boring moments at airports and during flights. Her sentences were short, and I did race through the books to get to the end where more often than not she surprised me with a twist and pointed out little clues I'd overlooked along the way. She may not have be a scholarly writer, but she was nevertheless good at her craft in writing clever murder mysteries. She seldom bored me.

Apple Lets You Download Six Free Audio Books Read by Celebrity Narrators: Start with Kate Beckinsale Reading Pride & Prejudice ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/apple-lets-you-download-six-free-audio-books-read-by-celebrity-narrators.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Classroom Bookshelf --- www.theclassroombookshelf.com

The Atlantic:  ‘Christmas Poem’ by e. e. cummings ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/christmas-poem-by-e-e-cummings/578980/

The Atlantic:  What Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Teaches Readers ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2018/12/what-jane-austens-pride-prejudice-teaches-readers/578872/

Jane Austen’s Subtly Subversive Linguistics ---
https://daily.jstor.org/jane-austens-subtly-subversive-linguistics/

Emily Dickinson's electric love letters to Susan Gilbert  ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/12/10/emily-dickinson-love-letters-susan-gilbert/?mc_cid=ff1aba8dfe&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

How Emily Dickinson Writes A Poem: A Short Video Introduction  ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/emily-dickinson-writes-poem-short-video-introduction.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

 

Free Electronic Literature --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI




Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on December 27, 2018
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2018/TidbitsQuotations122718.htm             

USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the booked obligation of $19+ trillion) ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2016/05/25/spring-2016-to-whom-does-the-us-government-owe-money-n2168161?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
The US Debt Clock in Real Time --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 
Remember the Jane Fonda Movie called "Rollover" --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film)

To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the unbooked obligation of $100 trillion and unknown more in contracted entitlements) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/15/news/economy/entitlement-benefits/
The biggest worry of the entitlements obligations is enormous obligation for the future under the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are now deemed totally unsustainable ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

Entitlements are two-thirds of the federal budget. Entitlement spending has grown 100-fold over the past 50 years. Half of all American households now rely on government handouts. When we hear statistics like that, most of us shake our heads and mutter some sort of expletive. That’s because nobody thinks they’re the problem. Nobody ever wants to think they’re the problem. But that’s not the truth. The truth is, as long as we continue to think of the rising entitlement culture in America as someone else’s problem, someone else’s fault, we’ll never truly understand it and we’ll have absolutely zero chance...
Steve Tobak ---
http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2013/02/07/truth-behind-our-entitlement-culture/?intcmp=sem_outloud

"These Slides Show Why We Have Such A Huge Budget Deficit And Why Taxes Need To Go Up," by Rob Wile, Business Insider, April 27, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-presentation-on-the-federal-budget-2013-4
This is a slide show based on a presentation by a Harvard Economics Professor.

Peter G. Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/

Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm




Trinity University Earns High Ranking for Accounting Program in 2019 ---
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/trinity-university/news/trinity-university-2019-college-major-top-ranked-ranking-business-management-marketing-sales_accounting/


The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released on Wednesday its picks for the safest cars from model year 2019.

The Safest Cars are Foreign (think Subaru):  These are the Safest Cars for 2019
https://www.businessinsider.com/safest-cars-for-model-year-2019-2018-12


Change ‘default’ option to ease student loan debt crisis ---
https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/commentary/change-default-option-to-ease-student-loan-debt-crisis/article_549b795e-f40e-11e8-888a-47d53840c3d9.html

Student loans are imposing crushing burdens on millions of young Americans. According to one account, about one-quarter of the borrowers who began repaying their loans in 2005, 2007 or 2009 have since defaulted on them.

That number greatly understates the economic hardship, not to mention the daily anxiety, produced by the pressures of repayment. What if there was an easy way to respond to the student debt crisis? A response that did not involve heavy-handed regulatory interventions?

Such a response is identified in new research by James Cox and Daniel Kreisman of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Their recommended reform is stunningly simple: Change the default plan offered on StudentLoans.gov. (This “default” refers not to the failure to pay back federal student loans but to a pre-selected option, in which borrowers are enrolled in the program if they do not actively opt out of it.)

As the federal website is now constructed, borrowers are automatically enrolled in the standard plan, which calls for a 10-year fixed repayment. But for most borrowers, there is a safer and smarter choice: an income-driven repayment plan, or IDR for short.

The advantage of IDR is that it gives borrowers significant protection if they fail to find jobs or if their salaries are low. Repayments are limited to a percentage of borrowers’ discretionary income (usually 10 percent to 15 percent) above a specified threshold (typically 150 percent of the poverty line).

There is an additional benefit: Loans are forgiven after a certain period, such as 25 years. Why, then, are there so few takers?

Cox and his collaborators tried to answer that question by creating an online facsimile of StudentLoans.gov and asking participants — residents of Georgia with a family size of one — to choose a plan. This was an experiment, not a real loan, but the researchers created monetary incentives to ensure that participants would take the task seriously.

As in the real world, a strong majority of participants chose the standard plan when it was the default option. But when the website’s design was changed so that IDR was the default option, about two-thirds of participants ended up choosing it. As the authors put it, “The government has a very easy policy lever to pull if it wants to increase uptake of income driven repayment plans.”

Many people think that when people are choosing poorly, it’s best to provide them with clear, simple information. But when participants were informed about the distribution of earnings among recent college graduates — a clear signal that for many people, IDR might well be best — they nonetheless stuck with the standard plan if it was the default. Surprisingly, information did not help.

It is true, of course, that IDR is not best for everyone. If borrowers can repay their loans over a 10-year period, the standard plan is better, because they pay interest over a shorter period of time. For that reason, it might make sense to include a clear notation on the website explaining to people that while the standard plan is riskier, it works well for some borrowers.

Making the IDR the default would not do anything to help people who are currently struggling to repay their loans. For them, more ambitious ideas are worth considering; some of these proposals would help future borrowers as well.

Continued in article


Clinical Doctorates:  Non-research-oriented doctoral work in graduate education ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/19/professional-practice-doctoral-category-expands-carnegie-system?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=ba8f876142-DNU_WO20181217_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-ba8f876142-197565045&mc_cid=ba8f876142&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

A major reshuffling of how university graduate programs are categorized is quietly debuting this week, adding a growing “professional practice” category to research-based doctoral programs at universities nationwide.

It is the latest adjustment to the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the basic way that colleges and universities are categorized -- a process that is likely to accelerate as the classification moves from a five-year cycle of re-examining classifications to a three-year cycle.

In a kind of soft opening posted to its website Tuesday, the Carnegie researchers, who since 2014 have been based at Indiana University, included “doctor's degree -- professional practice” in their methodology for the first time.

Carnegie will now categorize research universities in one of three ways: “very high research activity” institutions with at least $5 million in research expenditures; “high research activity” institutions, also with at least $5 million in research expenditures; and “doctoral/professional universities” -- these report less than $5 million in research or don’t report such expenditures. The categories, respectively, were originally "highest," "higher" and "moderate" research universities.

The first two are equivalent to R1 and R2, while the third now includes those that confer 30 or more “professional practice” doctoral degrees in at least two programs. So-called first professional degrees -- which include the M.D., J.D., Pharm.D., D.Div. and others -- hadn’t previously been considered in the Carnegie listings.

The new categorization will allow 89 more institutions to call themselves research universities, bringing the total to 423, up from 334 in 2015, according to data from Carnegie.

Victor Borden, project director for the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and a professor of higher education and student affairs at Indiana, said the new categories were an attempt to “reshape” the field in a time of significant change. “It acknowledges the fact that universities have expanded their offerings,” he said. It also “reflects a little better” the current landscape of higher education.

This week’s announcement represents the second time that the classifications have been released since the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching gave Indiana control of the process -- and one that will take place more regularly, Borden said, as college mergers, closures, reconfigurations and new online entrants emerge. "Things are changing much more quickly than they used to in terms of institutions," he said.

The reshaping means that a small handful of universities move up to R1 designation -- the classification now describes 120 institutions, up from 115 in 2015.

Auburn University president Steven Leath on Tuesday said the university’s elevation to R1 was “another affirmation of its drive forward to excellence.”

Robert Kelchen, of Seton Hall University’s Department of Education Leadership Management and Policy, said the distinction has become “a key marker of prestige” that, in reality, is “really more bragging rights than anything. Arguably the distinction that matters more for classification is whether you’re classified as a research university at all,” he said.

Kelchen noted that the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which just reached R1 status along with eight other universities, explicitly laid out that aspiration in its Top Tier Initiative, aiming to be “recognized as a top-tier public university in research, education and community impact” by 2025. The distinction is the first for a public university in Nevada.

In all, he noted, nine institutions moved up in the reclassification, while four moved down. “This change will scramble quite a few colleges’ peer groups -- and the peer groups are important for things like faculty and staff compensation -- and also who you’re comparing yourself to in terms of student outcomes.”

He noted that his university, Seton Hall, is moving from what was formerly R3 (a "moderate research" institution) to R2. “That changes, to some extent, the universities that we will compare ourselves to,” he said. “It does bring prestige, but it’s likely to bring more cost.”

For faculty, having one’s institution move up the research ladder has implications for tenure and promotion -- all of a sudden, Kelchen said, a professor at a place like Seton Hall “can be compared to people who have higher research intensity” at existing R2 universities. In a few cases, tenure decisions could be made by external personnel “from similar or higher Carnegie classification” universities.

Kelchen also said institutions find it difficult to figure out exactly how to maintain their status, since it is “based on a rather complicated analysis” that is hard to replicate. “You don’t know for sure where you end up standing. I think the best that colleges can do is predict where the cutoff line is, essentially.”

Asked whether the rise in the number of institutions labeled research universities suggests a kind of grade inflation, Kelchen said the R1 designation "still means a lot." R2 is meaningful as well, just not to as many universities.

"But what needs to be looked at is whether the colleges now considered research universities would have been so in the past without the new methodology," he said.

As at Auburn and UNLV, the change was met with excitement at Dartmouth College, which had slipped from R1 classification in 2015, only to regain it Tuesday.

Dean Madden, Dartmouth’s vice provost for research, said the development was “a really nice recognition that you can do student-centered research -- and do it at the highest level.”

But like Kelchen he admitted that the ranking algorithms are “really complicated,” which makes it difficult to figure out exactly how Dartmouth rose again to R1. “It’s just hard for us to get overly granular” without knowing more, he said.

But the effort, which coincided with a major capital campaign, saw Dartmouth strengthen research in STEM, social sciences, the arts and the humanities. “All of those factors together combined to give us a good outcome,” he said.

Continued in article


How to Mislead with Statistics:  Guns Kill More U.S. Children Than Cancer
https://qz.com/1505227/guns-kill-more-more-us-children-per-year-than-cancer/

Jensen Comment
The headline and the bar chart are more misleading than the article itself that provides added detail that some of those deaths by guns would've likely been deaths by other means had guns not been available:

. . .

The researchers used data from a US Centers for Disease Control database that compiles death certificates throughout the US; 2016 is the most recent year for which complete data is available. Of the 3,143 US childhood gun deaths that year, 1,865, or about 60%, were homicides. Another 35% (1,102 deaths) were suicides, and 4% (126 deaths) were unintentional shootings. The circumstances surrounding the remaining 1% (50 deaths) were too unclear to be categorized in this way.

“Children in America are dying or being killed at rates that are shameful,” Edward W. Campion, the executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a physician, wrote in an editorial that was published the same day as the study. “The sad fact is that a child or adolescent in the United States is 57% more likely to die by the age of 19 years than those in other wealthy nations. America’s children and adolescents are at far higher risk for death than are youth in other developed countries such as England, Sweden, and Australia.”

Continued in article

For example, of the 3,143 deaths by guns over a third were suicides. Chances are that most of those children bent on committing suicide would've found other means to die such as overdosing, jumping off balconies or crashing vehicles. And how do we know that quite a few of the deaths attributed to vehicle accidents were really undetected suicides.

Only 126 childhood deaths(4%) purportedly were unintentional --- a lot less than is implied by the headline and bar chart. I'm not sure how deaths that were accidental due to unintended victims of drive-by shootings are classified. Are these homicides or unintentional?

What is the real tragedy in the USA is that nearly 2,000 childhood deaths per year are from homicides. As with suicides, if guns were not available chances are that many of those homicides would have resulted in deaths by other means such as knives or beatings.

What is very misleading in the above article is the failure to report number of lives saved and rapes prevented when a "child" is killed by a gun. A goodly number of the teens killed by guns were teens threatening police or teens who invaded households or were attempting to commit violent rapes or car jackings with their own weapons. Some were killed in armed holdups. Some were killed in various other types of self defense.

And it's very misleading to compare nations and different cultures on the basis of childhood gun deaths. Nations with fewer gun deaths are likely to have fewer homicides, rapes, and/or suicides for various cultural reasons or they are more dangerous for children (especially females) for other reasons. If fewer children are killed by guns in Mexico City than in Chicago or Dallas does that make the streets safer for children in Mexico City (or Bangkok or Rio)?

I'm all in favor of gun laws with severe punishments for guns that are not very securely locked in place. I don't think there's a need for assault rifles to be sold to anybody other than law enforcement and the military. But I also think that gun possession is a deterrent that is impossible to build into statistics. It's impossible to measure the number of crimes that did not take place because of any one deterrent. I believe gun possession is a deterrent to crime in the grand scheme of things.

And while we're at it, cancer one of the very leading killers of adults. But it's played up more in the media as a killer of children than is warranted, especially by non-profits seeking money for cancer care and research. But if you look at the bar chart in the above article, 9% of childhood deaths from cancer is only slightly higher than 7% of dying from suffocation (apart from drowning) that gets very little fund raising attention in the media. Aside from vehicle deaths, childhood deaths are relatively low. We, with the help of nature, protect our children pretty well in the USA.


The 10 Android apps that made the most money worldwide in 2018 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/highest-grossing-android-google-play-apps-worldwide-2018-12
Jensen Comment
The winner is Tinder (dating app) followed by streaming entertainment apps.

The Atlantic:  The Five Years That Changed Dating ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/tinder-changed-dating/578698/

Here are the 10 tech gadgets you should buy this holiday season, according to Oprah ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/oprah-favorite-things-2018-tech-gadgets-2018-11
Jensen Comment
I can do nicely without these Oprah.

Time Magazine:  The Best Gadgets of 2018 ---
Click Here

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


Time Magazine:  The Best iPhone and Android Apps of 2018 ---
Click Here


The Atlantic:  The 17 Best Films of 2018 ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/the-atlantic-best-films-of-2018/578470/


Brain Pickings:  The Best Books of 2018
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/12/21/best-books-of-2018/?mc_cid=b80285e7a5&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Brain Pickings:  The Loveliest Children’s Books of 2018 ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/12/18/best-childrens-books-2018/?mc_cid=6c69a0cc22&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

Bob Jensen's threads on children's books ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Children


The Most Thought Provoking Books VOX Staff Read in 2018 ---
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/21/18136031/best-books-2018-vox-staff


Wired:  11 Fantastic Science Books to Binge Over the Holidays ---
https://www.wired.com/story/fantastic-science-books-to-binge-over-the-holidays/


Top Reads in the Chronicle of Higher Education

2018

2017

2016

Jensen Comment
When possible read the comments. Readers are often far less biased than the Chronicle's authors and editors. Sometimes editors will not even allow comments.


Once a mark of the cultured, language-learning is in retreat among English speakers. It’s never too late, but where to start?
https://www.1843magazine.com/content/ideas/robert-lane-greene/which-best-language-learn

Jensen Comment
There was a time when English scholars had to have two other languages for Ph.D. completion.

Then desired skills in computer programming "languages" replaced one or both cultural languages in Ph.D. requirements even though programming "languages" are hardly the same as cultural languages.

When I got my Ph.D. the language requirement at Stanford had been reduced to a one-course requirement that was waived for me because I had several Russian courses as an undergraduate.  I could read Pushkin, but never in my whole life could I read Pravda. But I did teach FORTRAN early on in my faculty career. I think I could still teach FORTRAN, but I can no longer read Pushkin.

While living 24 years in San Antonio among so many people who were fluent in English and Spanish it amazed me how so many people like some of my former secretaries could shift back and forth without seemingly being aware what language they were using at the moment. It's like they did not have to consciously translate in their heads. I envied their skill, but my excuse for not learning Spanish is that my brain was already full.


A higher saving rate has the potential to reduce the trade deficit without protectionism. If accompanied by appropriate monetary policy, and not canceled out by bigger government budget deficits, a higher saving rate would also make more funds available for research and development ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-29/retirement-planning-nudge-yes-backlash-no
Jensen Comment
Decades ago people managed to save in various ways and still keep equity in their long-time homes and farms to pass along to their heirs. Now the main nest egg for many is still in their homes and farms, but with reverse mortgages, down-sizing sales, and longer expected life those equities get consumed before death. This becomes a spiral where heirs have less and less to leave to their children. One biggest culprits is the reverse mortgage. The other is sale of the home followed by expensive assisted living.

The big culprits in many ways are the heirs themselves (usually children). Decades ago children cared for elderly parents (often in their own homes) until the time came for some of the most ill ones (think senility) moved on to nursing facilities that were relatively inexpensive with very modest quality of care. Now many heirs screw themselves by encouraging very expensive assisted living (in apartments with daily meal plans) before some have to be moved into very expensive nursing care costing $5,000 to $10,000 or more per month except for the old folks on Medicaid that get pushed off into lousy nursing homes (that are no longer cheap).


Semantic Web:  An Overview of the Current State of Linked and Open Data in Cataloging ---
https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ital/article/view/10432


It always rewards lawyers in the end
Temple Reaches $5.5 Million Settlement In U.S. News Rankings Scandal
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/12/temple-reaches-55-million-settlement-in-us-news-rankings-scandal.html


Cut and Paste Non-cited Plagiarism of His Own Undisputed Work Leads to an Embarrassing Retraction ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2018/05/02/a-new-data-thug-is-born/
"A model for ethical reasoning": Retraction of Sternberg (2012) ---
http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-65591-002

Retraction Watch (cheating in research) --- http://retractionwatch.com

The Retraction Watch Database ---
http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx?
For example, put Accounting into the subject box and view the hit list (not all are accounting research retractions)
Bob Jensen's threads on professor cheating are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize


Chronicle of Higher Education:  ‘Why Didn’t I Get an A?’ ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/12/20/how-do-professors-respond-regrade-requests-one-department-encourages-instructors?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=1b4e638776-WNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-1b4e638776-197565045&mc_cid=1b4e638776&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Jensen Comment
Before I retired I grew weary of re-grade requests, because in accountancy getting a first job offer is very dependent upon gpa such a 3.4 or higher. I taught an accounting theory course that masters students often take in the last semester. The typical student begging for a grade change was a masters student having lower than a 3.4 (think 3.0) in our masters program. I considered arguments presented by students, but I seldom changed grades, because once you start that you might be flooded every term with grade change requests. Fortunately, many of my students already had job offers before they entered the masters program (after they interned in their senior year with higher gpa averages). However, even those with new jobs in hand wanted to improve their transcripts.

The above article mentions that in some instances it may be better to pass the buck and have administrators (think department heads) or grade-change faculty committees. However, other faculty may be reluctant to get involved in grade-change evaluations for other faculty.

December 21, 2018 reply from Harry Howe

I'm reminded of the legendary response to this question delivered by an acquaintance at an Albany-area school: "Why did get an F?
Because they don't allow us to hand out Z's at _____"

I'm not sure that this answer would get a lot of support in the current climate . . .

Jensen Comment

The students I would like to give Z grades to are the ones I caught cheating red handed. I had a student who years earlier got an F for plagiarizing an entire term paper requested a grade change because plagiarism did not warrant a life sentence.


How to Increase Power Without Increasing Sample Size ---
https://www.bitss.org/2018/12/17/power-to-the-plan/ 


Why Wikipedia’s “Nuclear Option” Is the Right Call ---
https://slate.com/technology/2018/12/wikipedia-nuclear-option-administrators-unself-banning.html

Wikipedia --- https://www.wikipedia.org/

Donate to Wikipedia (Please) ---
https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LandingPage&country=US&uselang=en&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=donate&utm_campaign=C13_en.wikipedia.org

Jensen Comment
Please donate to Wikipedia. This is fantastic knowledge base that still resists advertising revenue. What a free resource.
By the way Wikiversity has free course materials ---
https://www.wikiversity.org/

Commons Freely usable photos & more

Wikivoyage Free travel guide

Wiktionary Free dictionary

Wikibooks Free textbooks

Wikinews Free news source

Wikidata Free knowledge base

Wikiversity Free course materials

Wikiquote Free quote compendium

MediaWiki Free & open wiki application

Wikisource Free library

Wikispecies Free species directory

Meta-Wiki Community coordination & documentatio

 


Vermont's Tenured Faculty Purge Is Part Of Anti-Tenure Trend In Higher Ed ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/12/vermonts-tenured-faculty-purge-is-part-of-anti-tenure-trend-in-higher-ed-.html


Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_open_online_course

edX --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdX

What do Tesla and edX have in Common?
Though edX’s revenue is growing and reached $54 million in 2016, the MOOC provider consistently spends more than it makes ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/12/18/quest-long-term-sustainability-edx-tries-monetize-moocs?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=6f9a605648-DNU_WO20181217_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-6f9a605648-197565045&mc_cid=6f9a605648&mc_eid=1e78f7c952

By establishing themselves as a place where so much content is available free, he said, providers like edX have to work extremely hard to get customers to pay.

Jensen Comment
MOOCs themselves have enormous economies of scale where it costs not much more to deliver a MOOC course to a million students than it does to a hundred online students.
edX moves in for some MOOCs to provide a costly service with fewer economies of scale --- evaluating what each student has learned for purposes of assigning a "grade" for a certificate or for college transcript credit. Thousands and thousands of MOOCs courses from prestigious universities around the world are usually free for students, but certificates and credits are not free.

Perhaps most retired professors would've loved to carry on teaching beyond when they retired. But many, like me, grew weary of the grading process that is increasingly contentious between teachers and students. MOOC teachers normally only grade their onsite students and leave it to companies like edX to do the grading and some other course activities for online students.

And MOOC courses are seldom easy for students. A professor friend who took a MOOC claims taking a MOOC is "like drinking from a high-pressure  fire hose." The most successful MOOC courses are usually advanced courses rather than basic courses where students often need more hand holding.

Bob Jensen's threads on MOOCs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


A Misleading Article
The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival ---
https://daily.jstor.org/the-sharing-economy-was-dead-on-arrival/

Jensen Comment
This article makes some good points and then goes on to make unwarranted extrapolations. Just because Uber and some other sharing firms are in trouble does not extrapolated to the entire "sharing" economy.

My first thought was to a recent time I arrived at the Baltimore airport and faced an expensive taxi ride to my hotel in Washington DC. When picking up my luggage I was told I could save about 75% of that price by taking a shared-ride van. Sure the ride took slightly over an hour longer taking my fellow passengers to their destinations before I reached my destination, but to my knowledge this shared-ride van business is still highly competitive in the Baltimore airport and some other airports across the USA. The shared-ride concept did not begin with Uber and will not end with Uber.

I thought of the thousands of libraries who share books with readers and the many, many journals, newspapers, and magazines that now share their articles online for free for limited or unlimited periods of time. Many scholarly associations have come to terms with sharing knowledge for free that they used to sell on a paid subscription basis.

I thought of the magnificent Wikipedia that where users themselves share their scholarship for free with others around the world. Wikipedia now is bigger and better than any encyclopedia. it's not without problems, but users don't let the problems destroy the magnificence of what we have in Wikipedia.

I thought of the wonderful MOOCs where prestigious universities share thousands upon thousands of courses for free around the world each year. Sure edX and other firms selling badges and credits for those courses are not yet profitable, but the courses themselves are free to students who just want to learn.

I thought of Elon Musk's recent announcement that all Tesla patents, including some very valuable patents, are open shared. Sure some investors will complain that this is sacrificing profits and creating risks that competitors will leverage those patents to harm Tesla. But the fact that Tesla does this appeals to many Tesla customers who think open sharing is part of a bigger picture of capitalism in a more sharing economy.

I thought of the enormous SSRN where scholars around the world make millions of their research findings available for free online. Sure there are others on the SSRN that only link their works to fee journals, but the majority of authors are sharing their research for free.

I thought about how prestigious universities and other employers now look for open sharing in resumes and use "volunteerism" as an important criterion for employment and/or admission of students.

I thought of Bob Jensen who, before and after retirement, shared and still shares 50+ hours per week adding to an open sharing Website where his only reward is the occasional messages of gratitude from users. He's no longer building a career or selling his consulting services. He does this willingly for free in the tremendous sharing spirit that evolved since the World Wide Web was invented. Much of what Bob Jensen shares is admittedly made possible by the willingness of millions of scholars and researchers to share their produce for free.

That claim that the "sharing economy was not dead on arrival" is just not a valid claim in the 21st Century where attitudes about open sharing economies have greatly changed. Knowledge wants to be free.

My thoughts on open sharing years ago ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000AAA/AAAaward_files/AAAaward02.htm


Video: A Scenario of Higher Education in 2020 (or thereabouts)---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ

From a Chronicle of Higher Education newsletter on December 18, 2018

I'm Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, covering innovation in and around academe. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week:

Will a “certificate-first” strategy pay dividends?

It’s not surprising that a top education official for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would evangelize. But Clark Gilbert’s latest cause has nothing to do with religion.

Gilbert is president of BYU Pathway Worldwide, the online arm of Brigham Young University-Idaho, and he’s on a mission to get more colleges to recognize or even adopt a curricular model pioneered there. It’s a model that sounds to me like “stackable credentials” on steroids. Gilbert calls it “certificate first.”

The approach has intrigued me since I wrote about the PathwayConnect program two summers ago. Back then, the idea of having students earn a job-related credential as the first step in their college experience struck me as a clever retention strategy for the adult population that BYU-Idaho was serving through the program.

It seemed especially well-suited to women who were starting or returning to college after years at home raising their families, or for men who might be skeptical about this whole college thing that their church was encouraging them to pursue. It gave students a chance to earn a worthwhile credential early in their educational journey.

This past year, Pathway adopted “certificate first” as its standard operating procedure, with about two dozen 15-credit
certificates on offer. Its philosophy: General education can wait.

Gilbert says the results have been striking. “It turns out that starting with a certificate in the first year is a big deal for at-risk students,” he told me. The persistence rate for students who had earned a certificate was 85 percent, compared with 65 percent for those who hadn’t.

BYU-Idaho’s 40,000-plus online students, including those in PathwayConnect, are by most definitions, at risk: Seventy percent, it estimates, are first-generation college students, low-income students, or both. Most of them work, and about half have tried college before but didn’t complete.

For these students, Gilbert says, advising and scholarships have their place as retention strategies, but neither is “nearly as powerful as curriculum design.” Colleges need to be deliberate, he says: “It doesn’t mean you cut up a bachelor’s degree into 15-credit chunks.”

In other words, the first credential needs to be designed so that it is both useful on its own and as a solid building block in a stackable credential that really stacks up.

Now that Gilbert has seen the effectiveness of the curricular shift, he believes that “it’s ethically irresponsible not to start with a certificate-first program.” And not just at BYU-Idaho.

He’s begun meeting with officials at other colleges and state higher-education systems, hoping to persuade other institutions that serve similarly at-risk populations to consider adopting the strategy. He also wants other colleges to award credit for and stack the Pathway certificates into the degrees they offer, should the students decide to transfer.

To buttress the case for change, GIlbert draws on statistics that I return to often in discussions of inequities in higher education:
data from the Pell Institute showing that only about 11 percent of the lowest-income adults earn bachelor’s degrees by age 24, compared with 58 percent of the highest-income quartile. “I don’t know how the academy walks away from that data point,” Gilbert says.

Me neither.

Still, it might be too soon to declare this strategy the be all and end all. I’ve heard of the approach’s being effective in other places. Maricopa Community College, in Arizona, has long seen students enrolling for full degrees after completing a company-sponsored certificate there. But I suspect that a few more semesters of data might be helpful to GIlbert’s cause. What do you think? Has a strategy like this worked for your college? Are there pitfalls to putting off general education until later? Let me know. I’ll share responses in a future newsletter.


Facebook says there's an innocent explanation for why it allowed Spotify and Netflix to access your private messages ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-explains-why-spotify-netflix-private-messages-2018-12


The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/13/quartz-69gtthe-most-effective-memory-methods-are-difficultand-thats-why-they-work
Jensen Comment
This is an excellent article.


DNA Forensics Can End Ivory Trafficking. Will Countries Play Along?
https://daily.jstor.org/dna-forensics-can-end-ivory-trafficking-will-countries-play-along/


How to Create a Syllabus --- www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-syllabus

Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


State-sponsored Chinese hackers infiltrated IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, then stole their clients' secrets ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-hackers-stole-info-from-ibm-hewlett-packard-enterprise-clients-2018-12


The Year 1552:  The First Arithmetic Book Printed in England

Luca Pacioi  --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Pacioli
There are at least two common mistakes with respect to Luca Pacioli (a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci). One is to assume Pacioli's famous 1494 book is an accounting book. Pacioli only used bookkeeping as an illustration of algebraic equations in his famous Summa mathematics book in 1494.
A second mistake is to assume Pacioli invented double-entry bookkeeping. The origins of double-entry bookkeeping are unknown and this type of bookkeeping is only illustrated by Pacioli in Summa.

From this wonderful mathematics history site on December 18, 2018 ---
https://www.maa.org/news/on-this-day

Cuthbert Tunstall died in Lambeth, London, England in 1559. He wrote (in Latin in 1552) the first arithmetic book printed in England, which he based on Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica.

More information about:
Cuthbert Tunstall
Luca Pacioli

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory


Excellent, Cross-Disciplinary Overview of Scientific Reproducibility in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2018/12/15/excellent-cross-disciplinary-overview-of-scientific-reproducibility-in-the-stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy/

Bob Jensen's threads on the lack of validity and replication research in accountancy ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm


Turn Your Mouse into a Laser Pointer in PowerPoint ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/398980/turn-your-mouse-into-a-laser-pointer-in-powerpoint/


Helicopter Law Professors Are Hurting Their Students ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2018/12/helicopter-law-professors-are-hurting-their-students.html

Helicopter professors, like their parenting counterparts, hover over students, guiding them precisely, and swooping in to rescue them from any hint of failure or challenge. Just as helicopter parenting can be harmful to children, helicopter professoring poses similar threats to students, not the least of which is creating disengaged students dependent on professors for all aspects of their learning and development.

The instinct to be a helicopter professor is understandable in light of several social and cultural circumstances of today’s legal education. First, law students today are largely Millennials who were helicoptered parented and educated in a system that often focused solely on test results. Second, law professors are at times overly focused are garnering positive student evaluation scores, which may be easier to do with a little extra spoon feeding. Professors too may themselves be helicopter parents in their non-work hours, a behavioral pattern that too easily can infiltrate the classroom. Finally, law schools today are seeing a rise in students that have a consumerist attitude and in some cases lower academic credentials; those types of students expect and perhaps need additional assistance. But satisfying that need, combined with the focus on quantifying assessment practices and on improving teaching techniques, may easily cross the line into helicopter behavior.

This Article, after detailing the factors that contribute to the helicopter professoring phenomenon, provides a theoretical framework for understanding helicoptering behavior as well as guidance for avoiding the negative manifestations of such behavior. Looking to parenting literature and advice rendered about how to not be a helicopter parent, this Article outlines a teaching style to help professors be responsive to students’ needs, maintain high expectations of their students, and yet avoid the harmful helicoptering behavior that can stunt individual learning and development. Offering practical suggestions and also ways to navigate the contemporary law school environment, this Article seeks to encourage professors to be authoritative educators who help develop internally-motivated learners who become successful, self-sufficient attorneys

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This article is controversial, since helping students overcome learning obstacles is part and parcel to what we do as teachers. There's really a spectrum of extreme helicoptering on one end and the BAM model on the other end based on evidence that students remember what they learn better if they learning it on their own ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

What seems to be well known is that there's no one best teaching approach for all students in all circumstances. PowerPoint lectures are great (and efficient) in some circumstances. Socratic method is great in some circumstances. Flipping a classroom works wonders for some students and is a disaster for others. Some general guidelines, however, are important to consider. Students who are always seeking a crutch to avoid learning on their own are probably harmed by teachers who are always ready, willing, and able to provide those crutches. Or put another way, at some point baby birds have to be kicked out of the nest and struggle (often painfully) to live more and more on their own. On the other hand, if they're kicked out too soon they may wither and die.

The best teachers have the wisdom to know when to helicopter and when to leave make students struggle more and more on their own. In so many ways teaching is a lot like parenting. However, some teachers are lousy parents and vice versa. Teaching really isn't all parenting.

One way teachers can cut back on helicoptering is to place their number one priority on excellent preparation both for classes and for assigned learning materials. Many students rely on helicoptering because their teachers are poorly prepared in their courses.


How to mislead with statistics and econometrics and obstruct economics learning
The Atlantic:  Behavioral economics upended the idea that humans act solely in their rational self-interest. So why do most undergrads barely learn anything about the field?
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/12/why-do-econ-classes-barely-mention-behavioral-economics/578092/

In the late 1800s, one of the most enduring fictional characters of all time first appeared on the scene. No, I am not talking about Sherlock Holmes or Oliver Twist, but a less well-known though arguably more influential individual: Homo economicus.

Literally meaning “economic man,” the origins of the term Homo economicus are somewhat obscureearly references can be traced to the Oxford economist C. S. Devas in 1883—but his characteristics have become all too familiar. He is infinitely rational, possessing both unlimited cognitive capacity and access to information, but with the persona of the Marlboro Man: ruggedly self-centered, relentlessly materialistic, and a complete lone ranger. Homo economicus, created to personify the supposedly rational way humans behave in markets, quickly came to dominate economic theory.

But then in the 1970s, the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky made a big discovery. The academics drew on psychological evidence to show that the actions of human beings deviate from the ironclad rationality of Homo economicus in all sorts of ways: People make systematic errors of judgment, such as being excessively attached to what they own, and yet are also more generous and cooperative than they’re given credit for. These insights led to the founding of a new field, behavioral economics, which became a household name 10 years ago, after Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler published the best-selling book Nudge and showed how this new understanding of human behavior could have major policy consequences. Last year, Thaler won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and promised to spend the $1.1 million in prize money “as irrationally as possible.”

But despite the fanfare, Homo economicus remains a stubbornly persistent part of the economics curriculum. While it is fashionable for most economics departments to have courses on behavioral economics, the core requirements in economics at many colleges are usually limited to only two substantive courses—one in microeconomics, which looks at how individuals optimize economic decisions, and another in macroeconomics, which focuses on national or regional markets as a whole. Not only is the study of behavioral economics largely optional, but the standard textbooks used by many college students make limited references to behavioral breakthroughs. Hal Varian’s Intermediate Microeconomics devotes only 16 of its 758 pages to behavioral economics, dismissing it as a blip in the grand scheme of things, an “optical illusion” that would disappear “if people took the time to consider choices carefully—applying the measuring stick of dispassionate rationality.” The staple textbook on macroeconomics, written by Gregory Mankiw, gives behavioral approaches even shorter shrift by scarcely mentioning them at all.

Instead, the overwhelming majority of courses that students take in economics are heavily focused on statistics and econometrics. In 2010, the Institute for New Economic Thinking convened a task force to study the undergraduate economics curriculum, following up on a report from 1991. What changed in the intervening years, it found, was “an increase in mathematical and technical sophistication” that was “not sufficient to foster habits of intellectual inquiry.” In other words, Homo economicus is going strong in lecture halls and textbooks across the country

Continued in article

December 16, 2018 reply from Tom Dyckman

Bob, In your comments on behavioral economics. I expected to see a reference to Dick Thayler's 2015 Nobel Award in Economics most recently described in his book "Misbehaving, published by Norton (2015) and an earlier book, Nudge, on which he was a coauthor. I would also note that while he has been a faculty member on the business faculty at Chicago for some time, he initially got interested in the field and did - what has been described as his best work - earlier at Cornell.

Bob Jensen's threads on what went wrong in accountancy research ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong


The K-12 Teaching Profession in Charts (2018) ---
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2018/12/the_teaching_profession_in_2018_in_charts.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=58699333&U=2290378&UUID=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f
Jensen Comment
So often teacher salary articles fail to mention that teachers, unlike most other workers, an earn added summer incomes (often by teaching summer school) onsite or online.
Also fringe benefits have gotten better for most teachers, including paid leaves.
The public often fails to understand the stress of teaching jobs, including enormous stresses of special education teaching.

The Pudding Cup (data and story visualization) --- https://pudding.cool/process/pudding-awards-2018/

Why the world's flight paths are such a mess ---
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/flight-paths/

Bob Jensen's threads on data visualization ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm


Bloomberg:  Bankruptcy on the Table as Boy Scouts Confront Sex Abuse Claims ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-19/bankruptcy-on-the-table-as-boy-scouts-confront-sex-abuse-claims?cmpid=BBD121918_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=181219&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily

Plaintiffs say the Boy Scouts didn’t do enough to protect them. Now the organization is taking measures to protect itself.


The Scarlet Letter --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter

UT-Dallas Ejects Transfer Student After His Plea Deal in Rape Case Sparks Outrage ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/UT-Dallas-Ejects-Transfer/245324?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest

From a Chronicle newsletter on December 14, 2018
UT-Dallas ejects student after his plea deal in a rape case. A former Baylor University fraternity president accused of raping a student there in 2016 won't go to jail or have to register as a sex offender.
But this week, the campus he transferred to after Baylor expelled him made it clear he's no longer welcome there either. Katie Mangan takes a look at the case that sparked outrage on two campuses and how a Texas lawmaker hopes to keep campuses better informed when expelled students surface elsewhere.

Jensen Comment
Students should beware of consensual sex since even when cleared by the courts they may be burdened with scarlet letters for the rest of their lives. One of the most difficult aspects in the #MeToo generation is proving sex was consensual and avoiding a lifetime burden of a scarlet letter. I'm not alleging in this particular case the sex was consensual, but it won't really matter to Jacob Andersen at this point. He's going to wear a scarlet letter for the remainder of his life even though he's seemingly been cleared by the court for date rape.

I wonder if this will reduce a lot of high school and college sex beyond other failed initiatives to do so. It may well dampen sex among students bound for lofty careers.


Maybe this is why St. Peter has one gate in heaven, and airlines have one luggage line for economy class passengers.
Why one super-long line is better than several shorter lines, according to science ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/one-long-line-is-better-than-several-shorter-ones-according-to-science-2018-12

Jensen Comment
This begs the question of when there are exceptions even though many organizations do optimize with one feeder line (such as having one coiled line in front of six bank tellers or six fast food order lines)

Is having five cash toll-booth lines on each side of a turnpike mathematical stupidity?
I have to think about this one some more. Much depends upon speed of service and ways the system quickly handles server breakdowns (such as moving fast to help customers in a breakdown line).
I think the super-long line solution assumes significantly varying service times such as when customers take up varying times with bank tellers. Delays at turnpike cash toll booths on average vary only slightly, but there are those exceptions for drivers who forgot to bring enough cash. The variance is smaller if those cash-short vehicles can be moved aside swiftly and processed separately.

Does having 20 passenger gates in an airport concourse take extra time?
This one is easy since each gate is providing a different type of service (i.e., a different travel destination)
The math super-long line solution assumes all servers can provide identical services.

Why are there separate lines in front of cashier stations at Walmart?
Are there reasons why a super-long line at Walmart might be suboptimal?
I think that it would be faster to have one super-long line in front of all self-checkout stations and one super-long line in front of human cashiers at Walmart.
Are there other reasons why Walmart and other super markets seldom have super-long cashier lines for carts too full for express checkouts?


In the Victorian era, a different kind of ghostwriting became popular—largely because it allowed men to take all the credit ---
https://daily.jstor.org/wb-yeats-live-in-spirit-medium/

Plagiarism Software Unveils a New Source for 11 of Shakespeare’s Plays
Shakespeare
leaned heavily on George North, a minor figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/books/plagiarism-software-unveils-a-new-source-for-11-of-shakespeares-plays.html

Bob Jensen's threads on plagiarism ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm


University of Illinois tenured professor fired for falsifying data in grant applications ---
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-university-of-illinois-professor-fired-20181214-story.html

Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize


Digital Currency (not synonymous with cryptocurrency) --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_currency

At least 15 central banks are serious (think Sweden) about getting into digital currency Digital cash may soon start replacing the physical kind ---
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612573/at-least-15-central-banks-are-serious-about-getting-into-digital-currency/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=cfce39475a-weekly_roundup_2018-12-20_edit&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-cfce39475a-153727301&goal=0_997ed6f472-cfce39475a-153727301&mc_cid=cfce39475a&mc_eid=fe7f400ea3

Jensen Comment
Whereas cryptocurrency and hard cash make it easier to launder money, digital currency makes laundering more difficult (but not impossible).
The USA has a $2+ trillion underground economy that relies mostly on physical cash.

For example, in San Antonio workers gather each day at selected street corners for employers to pick them up for labor jobs where cash wages go unreported at the end of the day. Law enforcement tends to look away because arrests would really hurt families with children, many of whom are undocumented residents of the USA and residents south of the Rio Grande. Digital currency would make it more difficult to make underground economy payments, but it could be done in foreign currencies and some forms of bartering and in cryptocurrencies.

Digital currency inhibits crime (think political kickbacks) which is why the USA Congress will never do away with hard cash.


Pew Research Center: Teens' Social Media Habits and Experiences ---
www.pewinternet.org/2018/11/28/teens-social-media-habits-and-experiences


Art Matters --- https://artuk.org/about/art-matters


Michel Foucault --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

Taking Michel Foucault off of his Pedestal
https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/1993/3/the-perversions-of-m-foucault


Porn sites collect more user data than Netflix or Hulu. This is what they do with it ---
https://qz.com/1407235/porn-sites-collect-more-user-data-than-netflix-or-hulu-this-is-what-they-do-with-it/

Jensen Comment
Netflix and Hulu would probably report a criminal data breach of privacy information (think credit card numbers). I wonder if that's also true of porn sites, many of which are sourced outside the USA (think Russia).

This article is quite revealing about some porn sites. Keep in mind it's harder to study off shore porn sites. And it's even harder to study illegal porn sites like child porn sites.


Science Magazine:  Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ ---
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=68417403&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_gXttVD4gG75LeTTSOewgyBouyFiyTNgaykefvzz_L0MRRAGrPf6uF9O3ErxyeoOQCLQjWqk2NI2vfzhgYlvLoZJSeiA&_hsmi=68417403


Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the parking benefits that churches, synagogues, hospitals, colleges and other nonprofits offer their employees are now taxable ---
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/16/congress-tax-reform-irs-churches-parking-1027598

Jensen Comment
I've not tracked what states with income taxes are also affected by this new rule. It's great to live in New Hampshire, but not in terms of Federal income tax.

This may be one of the first new taxes that Nancy Pelosi will try to repeal, but she will probably have to override President Trump among other hurdles to the tax elimination.


Cattle in New Hampshire?
The Most Important Agricultural Product in Each State
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/12/19/most-important-agricultural-product-from-each-state/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=DEC202018a&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Jensen Comment
What surprised me is how important cattle are to so many states. Maybe vegans won't rule the world.
New Hampshire thrives on fat (cattle) and sugar (maple syrup). Sigh!
Apples are a big thing in New York and all of New England.


Amazon vendors are paying for negative reviews of competitor products ---
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18140799/amazon-marketplace-scams-seller-court-appeal-reinstatement?_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_TE9N0rOOPFLkOsF5_kEflevzl-w_-5CoKw29lke7_-9ofVQmO6QKF-yT0poP-2UCD1snvcf5gtR96ErdtJ0XLc6upHA&_hsmi=68507669

Jensen Comment
I've always been suspicious of positive reviews (think books). But I often scan the negative reviews. It's important to consider the reasons given for negative reviews. Now, however, I will be more suspicious of all Amazon reviews.


Apple can't sell some iPhones in Germany because of its legal war with Qualcomm ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-qualcomm-iphone-germany-stores-2018-12


Four types of retirement plans for small businesses: SEP, Simple IRA, 401(k), and Solo 401(k) ---
http://maaw.blogspot.com/2018/12/four-types-of-retirement-plans-for.html


 




From the Scout Report on December, 

Freeplane (educational technology) --- www.freeplane.org 
Freeplane is an open-source mind mapping tool that prioritizes ease of use and speed in its design. Its developers state that "Freeplane allows the user to add content as quickly and naturally as they would in a text editor, yet produce structured content that can be manipulated as easily as a diagram." To keep large maps manageable, Freeplane supports folding branches, filtering of displayed information, and approximate search. Maps can also contain date information displayed in calendar format and task lists with reminders as tasks approach their deadlines. Freeplane can be extended with add-ons to add features like GTD workflows or a presentation mode. Users may also automate Freeplane using scripts written in Groovy or Javascript. Freeplane itself is a Java application and therefore runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, or any other system with a working Java runtime.


Restic (data backups)  --- https://restic.net/
Restic is a free software designed to provide backups that are easy, fast, verifiable, secure, and efficient. It's important for backups to be easy and fast so that doing them can become part of a user's usual routine. Restic allows users to verify backups, which will help to avoid the horrible situation of backup copies being corrupted. Restic encrypts data with industry-standard AES-256 and authenticates data using Poly1305. With so many storage providers charging per byte, space efficient deduplication of backups is very important. Restic supports backing up to a number of destinations -- external hard drives, local storage servers, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, and several others. The Restic documentation provides a detailed information on all Restic's capabilities. It also includes a step-by-step example with screenshots demonstrating how to configure backup to an Amazon S3 bucket. Restic binaries are available for Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. Source code for Restic can be located on GitHub.


Wonderopolis (Educational Technology) ---  https://wonderopolis.org/
We originally featured Wonderopolis in the 12-11-2015 Scout Report, and it continues to be a fun and educational resource for readers of all ages to explore. Courtesy of the National Center for Families Learning, this site "walks the line between formal and informal education," creating experiences supporting the idea that "wonder is for everyone." Readers may like to begin by scouting the homepage, where they will find some recent and past wonders from the Wonderopolis community, such as "How Big Is the World's Largest Robot?" and "Why Do Some Animals Have Nicknames?" Selecting one of these wonders calls up a page with erudite answers. For instance, "What Is a Food Desert?" leads to an article that carefully answers the question and a three-minute video explaining what one organization is doing to remedy their local food desert. Families may enjoy using the interactive Wonder Jar to generate a wonder that "is meant to create opportunities for humorous discussion, serious discussion, and general outside of the box -- or outside of the 'jar' -- thinking." Readers may also add a question to the Wonder Bank and use the search function under the Explore wonders tab to filter the 2,000 + wonders that users have already submitted.




Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and Learning Centers


Education Tutorials

Northwest Association for Biomedical Research: Teacher Center --- www.nwabr.org/teacher-center

The Classroom Bookshelf --- www.theclassroombookshelf.com

How to Create a Syllabus --- www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-syllabus

Journey of a Product: A loaf of bread ---
https://notredamecobham.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=d4a7f880f26145a8a08855c102b4fa6b
Jensen Comment
The Website ignores some externalities. For example, bread (especially white bread) is converted into sugar in the human body, thereby increasing the demand for insulin in diabetics and possibly even contributing to lower life expectancy in society. This is an example where accountants accumulate costs of bread all the way to the store shelves but ignore intangible costs along the way including such other intangibles as air pollution costs of production and delivery, soil erosion losses, and on and on and on. On farms such resources as rain water and ground water may be treated as free or nearly-free goods by accountants.

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 


Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

 

 

Northwest Association for Biomedical Research: Teacher Center --- www.nwabr.org/teacher-center

 

Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


Social Science and Economics Tutorials

Pew Research Center: Teens' Social Media Habits and Experiences --- www.pewinternet.org/2018/11/28/teens-social-media-habits-and-experiences

Why the world's flight paths are such a mess ---
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/flight-paths/

Hmong Studies Journal --- www.hmongstudiesjournal.org

From the Scout Report on December 14, 2018

New Museum of Black Civilizations Opens in Senegal

 

Senegal Unveils a Vast Museum That Raises the Stakes in Africa's Campaign to Reclaim Its Art
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/museum-of-black-civilizations-1409911

Museum of Black Civilisations aims to 'decolonise knowledge'
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/museum-black-civilisations-aims-decolonise-knowledge-181204221519936.html

President of France Will Recommend Full Restitution of Looted African Works
https://hyperallergic.com/472215/president-of-france-will-recommend-full-restitution-of-looted-african-works

Musee du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac: Africa
http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/collections/all-collections/the-main-collections-level/africa

What should be done with stolen artworks?
http://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/39974/1/what-should-be-done-with-stolen-artworks-ethiopia-nigeria-v-and-a-museum-debate

Hey, that's our stuff: Maasai tribespeople tackle Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/dec/04/pitt-rivers-museum-oxford-maasai-colonial-artefacts

 

Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


Law and Legal Studies

Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Law


Math Tutorials

Maybe this is why St. Peter has one gate and airlines have one luggage line for economy class
Why one super-long line is better than several shorter lines, according to science ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/one-long-line-is-better-than-several-shorter-ones-according-to-science-2018-12

Does Scrabble Need to be Fixed?
http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/does-scrabble-need-to-be-fixed

Mathematical Association of America: On This Day --- www.maa.org/news/on-this-day

The Year 1552:  The First Arithmetic Book Printed in England

Luca Pacioi  --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Pacioli
There are at least two common mistakes with respect to Luca Pacioli (a close friend of Leonardo da Vinci). One is to assume Pacioli's famous 1494 book is an accounting book. Pacioli only used bookkeeping as an illustration of algebraic equations in his famous Summa mathematics book in 1494.
A second mistake is to assume Pacioli invented double-entry bookkeeping. The origins of double-entry bookkeeping are unknown and this type of bookkeeping is only illustrated by Pacioli in Summa.

From this wonderful mathematics history site on December 18, 2018 ---
https://www.maa.org/news/on-this-day

Cuthbert Tunstall died in Lambeth, London, England in 1559. He wrote (in Latin in 1552) the first arithmetic book printed in England, which he based on Pacioli's Summa de arithmetica.

More information about:
Cuthbert Tunstall
Luca Pacioli

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory

 

Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Mathematics and Statistics

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


History Tutorials

The Case of Agatha Christie ---
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n24/john-lanchester/the-case-of-agatha-christie
Jensen Comment
I liked her books because they held my attention in boring moments at airports and during flights. Her sentences were short, and I did race through the books to get to the end where more often than not she surprised me with a twist and pointed out little clues I'd overlooked along the way. She may not have be a scholarly writer, but she was nevertheless good at her craft in writing clever murder mysteries. She seldom bored me.

America's Mailing Industry (Postal service, post office) ---
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/americasmailingindustry/

Humanizing Dick Cheney ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/12/vice-and-humanization-dick-cheney/578893/

Buckminster Fuller --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
Buckminster Fuller Documented His Life Every 15 Minutes, from 1920 Until 1983 ---
https://library.stanford.edu/collections/r-buckminster-fuller-collection

Why the world's flight paths are such a mess ---
https://multimedia.scmp.com/news/world/article/2165980/flight-paths/

Hmong Studies Journal --- www.hmongstudiesjournal.org

Hmong Cultural Center (Viet Nam) --- http://www.hmongcc.org/

Take a Virtual Tour of Brazil’s National Museum & Its Artifacts: Google Digitized the Museum’s Collection Before the Fateful Fire ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/take-a-virtual-tour-of-brazils-national-museum-its-artifacts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Pristine Footage Lets You Revisit Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Brothers ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/pristine-footage-lets-you-revisit-life-in-paris-in-the-1890s.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

40 photos of Google's rise from a Stanford dorm room to becoming a global internet superpower ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-history-in-photos-2015-10

Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to History
Also see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  

Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI


Language Tutorials

Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages


Music Tutorials

The Christmas Truce of 1914: A Heartening Story of Humanity in the Middle of War ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2010/12/25/the-christmas-truce/?mc_cid=a6bc841ed1&mc_eid=4d2bd13843

When Bach was in his mid-40s and at the height of his creative powers, he suddenly began recycling old material instead of composing original material ---
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/bach-master-recycler/

Meet the Hurdy Gurdy, the Hand-Cranked Medieval Instrument with 80 Moving Parts ---
http://www.openculture.com/2018/12/meet-hurdy-gurdy-hand-cranked-medieval-instrument-80-moving-parts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Musical Instrument Museums Online --- www.mimo-international.com/MIMO

December 21, 2018 reply from

Wow - thanks!

tl;dr - Do we have many musicians on this list? My completely unscientific
assessment seems to show a negative correlation between accounting and
musicality, and I don't know why. Or perhaps it is between accounting and
willingness to admit to musicality?

- - -

MIM (Brussels) is one of my favorite places in the world, but their own website
doesn't expose much of the collection. While this web site (MIMO, a European
collaboration) doesn't let you hear the instruments, one of the high points of being at
MIM in person, this site does expand on the collection.

DSO - listen to orchestra instruments:
https://www.mydso.com/dso-kids/learn-and-
listen/instruments

Guide to 100 musics w sound:
https://www.aaastateofplay.com/the-wide-world-of-
music-a-guide-to-100-musical-instruments-interactive/


You can also find musical instrument collections online in Google's Arts and Culture
museum tour site and app:
https://artsandculture.google.com/search?q=music

I am taking recommendations for my in-person instrument museum/store bucket
list, which only has a few listings:
1)
http://www.americanbanjomuseum.com/
2) Someplace with an Octobass

My passion is stringed folk instruments of all nations, and particularly those used in
American Bluegrass / Oldtime music, but I love all instruments; my idea of a good
time is visiting places like Gruhn Guitars (Nashville), Elderly Instruments (Lansing,
MI) or anyplace else with a collection of vintage instruments or making instruments
(Martin, Taylor, etc.).

You can listen to the kind of instruments I play at
https://countrymusichalloffame.org/education/instruments-in-country-
music#.XBzsAVxKg2w
- other than the Pedal Steel (I have some lap steels), I have
at least one of each of the other instruments within 30 feet of me as I speak (and
can literally grab one of most of them without leaving my seat).

Within the world of XBRL (most recently at the XBRL US event in November), I try to
bring together the musicians of the world to play with a meta-group called "The
Three Taggers" (the "Merry, musical, magical, mystical, mythical, mountain men of
metadata"). I'm always looking for fellow folk musicians (not just US-style) willing to
collaborate, but finding willing volunteers waning instead of waxing. For the next ISO
Blockchain meeting in Dublin, I think I have a few people coming together. I know
some of you play, but we haven't succeeded to bring together a group at AAA either.

Some of my XBRL and Blockchain song lyrics are available at The Three Taggers
website,
http://thethreetaggers.com/.

Here are my latest lyrics, a Blockchain song, to the tune of the Ballad of Jed
Clampett (The Beverly Hillbillies theme)

Come and (G) listen to my story 'bout a (Am) man named Naka- (D) moto
Poor engineer, we can’t (G6) find his family (G) photo
Then one day he was (C) playing with a (C#dim) hash, (D)
Came up with an idea for de- (G6) centralized (G) cash
(Consensus that is, digital gold, Merkle trees)

Well the first thing you know Satoshi's a billionaire
Kin folk said Bitcoin's mining makes it rare
Said that Zug is the place you oughta be
So he loaded up his wallet and Lambo'd to P2P
(Tokens that is, ICOs, trustless payments)


Eric E. Cohen

 

 

Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Music

Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm


Writing Tutorials

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries



Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine

CDC Blogs --- http://blogs.cdc.gov/

Shots: NPR Health News --- http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots

Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

December 15, 2018

December 17. 2018

December 18, 2018

December 19, 2018

December 20, 2018

December 21, 2018

December 22, 2018

December 26, 2018


Evidence That Gut Bacteria Change the Brain ---
https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2018/12/18/evidence-that-gut-bacteria-affect-the-brain
Jensen Comment
The links following this article are probably more valuable to you than the article itself.


Elevated iron is at the center of a web of disease stretching from cancer to diabetes ---
http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol

Cheerios are the best-selling breakfast cereal in America. The multi-grain version contains 18 milligrams of iron per serving, according to the label. Like almost any refined food made with wheat flour, it is fortified with iron. As it happens, there’s not a ton of oversight in the fortification process. One study measured the actual iron content of 29 breakfast cereals, and found that 21 contained 120 percent or more of the label value, and 8 contained 150 percent or more.1 One contained nearly 200 percent of the label value.

If your bowl of cereal actually contains 120 percent more iron than advertised, that’s about 22 mg. A safe assumption is that people tend to consume at least two serving sizes at a time.1 That gets us to 44 mg. The recommended daily allowance of iron is 8 mg for men and 18 mg for pre-menopausal women. The tolerable upper intake—which is the maximum daily intake thought to be safe by the National Institutes of Health—is 45 mg for adults.

It is entirely feasible that an average citizen could get awfully close to exceeding the maximum daily iron intake regarded as safe with a single bowl of what is supposed to be a pretty healthy whole-grain breakfast option.

And that’s just breakfast.

At the same time that our iron consumption has grown to the borders of safety, we are beginning to understand that elevated iron levels are associated with everything from cancer to heart disease. Christina Ellervik, a research scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital who studies the connection between iron and diabetes, puts it this way: “Where we are with iron now is like where we were with cholesterol 40 years ago.”

Continued in article


Humor for December 2018

College Humor ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JgcbtxURA4

The Best of Britain’s 2018 Christmas Commercials ---
https://www.jborden.com/the-best-of-britains-2018-christmas-commercials/

About Punmanship ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/so-you-think-its-all-a-big-joke-what-wit-really-is--and-why-we-need-it/2018/12/12/b4ea6d82-fd65-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.22b3bbf46493

Puns about German sausage are generally considered the worst ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/so-you-think-its-all-a-big-joke-what-wit-really-is--and-why-we-need-it/2018/12/12/b4ea6d82-fd65-11e8-862a-b6a6f3ce8199_story.html?utm_term=.d09d0c2737cf




Humor December 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1218.htm  

Humor November 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1118.htm 

Humor October 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1118.htm

Humor October 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1018.htm   

Humor September 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0918.htm 

Humor August 2018 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0818.htm  

Humor July 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0718.htm 

Humor June 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0618.htm

Humor May 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0518.htm

Humor April 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0418.htm

Humor March 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0318.htm 

Humor February 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0218.htm

Humor January 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0118.htm 

Humor December 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1217.htm

Humor November 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1117.htm

Humor October 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1017.htm

Humor September 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0917.htm 

Humor August 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0817.htm

Humor July 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0717.htm

Humor June 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0617.htm

Humor May 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0517.htm

Humor April 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0417.htm

Humor March 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0317.htm

Humor February 2017 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0217.htm

Humor January 2017 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0117.htm

 




Tidbits Archives --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/

Online Distance Education Training and Education --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud  (College, Inc.) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

The Cult of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm

How Accountics Scientists Should Change: 
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm 

What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

 

World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/

Interesting Online Clock and Calendar --- http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones --- http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) --- http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
         Also see http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
        
Facts about population growth (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth --- http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons --- http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.

Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social Networking ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting educators.
Any college may post a news item.

Accounting  and Taxation News Sites ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

 

For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to   http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators) http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.

Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing, doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics) research, publication, replication, and validity testing.

 

CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/  (Closed Down)
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
www.financialexecutives.org/blog

Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board on this financial reporting blog from Financial Executives International. The site, updated daily, compiles regulatory news, rulings and statements, comment letters on standards, and hot topics from the Web’s largest business and accounting publications and organizations. Look for continuing coverage of SOX requirements, fair value reporting and the Alternative Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such as the subprime mortgage crisis, international convergence, and rules for tax return preparers.
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv

September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@bonackers.com]
Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as well as a practicing CPA)

I found another listserve that is exceptional -

CalCPA maintains http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/  and they let almost anyone join it.
Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.

There are several highly capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and the answers are often in depth.

Scott

Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

Yes you may mention info on your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not have access to the files and other items posted.

Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I will get the request to join.

Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.

We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in California.... ]

Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

If any questions let me know.

Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
Hemet, CA
Moderator TaxTalk

 

 

 

 

Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm

 

Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

Some Accounting History Sites

Bob Jensen's Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
 

Accounting History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) --- http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.

MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting --- http://maaw.info/

Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/

Sage Accounting History --- http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269

A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm 

A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

From Texas A&M University
Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html

Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds

History of Fraud in America --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

 

Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone:  603-823-8482 
Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu